Lust and self-mutilation are closely related impulses. There are also self-mutilators among knowers: they do not want to be creators under any circumstances.
After all, what would be "beautiful" if the contradiction had not first become conscious of itself, if the ugly had not first said to itself: "I am ugly"?.
I will make an attempt to attain freedom, the youthful soul says to itself; and is it to be hindered in this by the fact that two nations happen to hate and fight one another, or that two continents are separated by an ocean, or that all around it a religion is taught with did not yet exist a couple of thousand years ago. All that is not you, it says to itself.
People who feel insecure in social situations never miss a chance to exhibit their dominance over close, submissive friends, whomthey put down publicly, in front of everyone--by teasing, for example.
To demand of strength that it should not express itself as strength, that it should not be a desire to overcome, a desire to throw down, a desire to become master, a thirst for enemies and resistances and triumphs, is just as absurd as to demand of weakness that it should express itself as strength.
The states in which we infuse a transfiguration and a fullness into things and poetize about them until they reflect back our fullness and joy in life... three elements principally: sexuality, intoxication and cruelty all belonging to the oldest festal joys.
Prejudice of the learned. - The learned judge correctly that people of all ages have believed they know what is good and evil, praise- and blameworthy. But it is a prejudice of the learned that we now know better than any other age.